


la régate de la mer

by Kate_Wisdom



Category: Enemy at the Door (TV)
Genre: Aftermath of Tentacles, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Forced to Watch, Guernsey customs, Hurt/Comfort, Internalized Homophobia, Multi, Nazi Germany, Other, Period-Typical Homophobia, Period-Typical Racism, Rape as Revenge, Rape as Symbolism, Rape to Teach a Lesson, Shame in Sexual Desires, Tentacle Bondage, Tentacles, Tentacles Trash Regatta, World War II, Xenophilia, tentacle penetration, the island of Guernsey rejecting its invaders
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-14
Updated: 2020-06-14
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:35:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24713188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kate_Wisdom/pseuds/Kate_Wisdom
Summary: In an attempt to improve morale among the islanders, Colonel Richter resurrects the annual boat race to Herm. What could possibly go wrong?
Relationships: Dieter Richter/Tentacles, Klaus Reinicke/Tentacles
Comments: 5
Kudos: 12
Collections: Nonconathon 2020





	la régate de la mer

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kainosite](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kainosite/gifts).



> Warnings for potentially problematic content and depictions of Nazi bigotry. Please read with caution.

According to Victor Hugo, celebrated French author and former Guernsey exile, the Channel Islands were small pieces of France which had fallen into the sea and had been picked up by England. Klaus Reinicke wondered what would have happened if the English hadn’t picked them up at all, and had left the Guernésiais to determine their own destiny.

Of course, it wasn’t as if Reinicke _disliked_ the English. He was just not as partial to them as others were; for instance, it would be impossible for anyone to be fonder of the English than Oberst Richter.

Still, while Reinicke might consider the Kommandant's indulgent attitude to be rather unfortunate in the circumstances, he supposed no real harm would come of it. The Guernésiais would learn to live quietly at heel, as the French had, and as the English would soon enough.

On that front, one could acknowledge that the island had been quiet, after last month’s excitement over Foster-Smythe and Feldwebel Hoffmann. Truth be told, Reinicke hadn’t relished pulling Party rank on Richter and the rest of the command staff, but his decision to do so had unquestionably been the correct one. Besides, it had been satisfying to have been proved right about Hoffmann. He had especially enjoyed seeing the look on Kluge’s face when the policeman had discovered that the Anglophile Feldwebel had turned deserter, just as Reinicke’s instinct had intuited he would.

In fact, matters on the island had almost become _too_ quiet. Morale had already been poor, owing to the first round of deportations and requisitions of civilian radios. Now, with the recent further food shortages, the mood seemed to have reached a despondent low.

It would have fallen to him to do something about it - - after all, maintaining morale on Guernsey and among the troops was within his sphere of responsibility. As such, he found himself rather put out to learn that another officer was proposing an event to improve island morale. None other than the usually unimaginative Major Freidel had gotten it into his head to resurrect Guernsey’s annual boat race to Herm.

“It is apparently quite a challenging row, but one that even novices can take part in,” the Herr Major was saying as Reinicke entered the Kommandant’s office. “Only 5740 metres in all, from Havelet Bay to Herm harbour. The racers used to lunch at the Mermaid Tavern before returning, but Sir Walter from the Guernsey Rowing Club agreed we would have them come straight back.”

“We would need to allow the time to make sure that all crews clear the Herm line safely before setting off again,” the Kommandant mused. He was bending over a map of the islands; Reinicke crossed the room to peer at it discreetly from over Freidel’s shoulder. “But as long as the racers remain south of Hermetier, there would not be a crossing of lines.”

Richter was looking rather more enthusiastic about this venture than Reinicke would have expected. Later, he discovered that the Oberst had in his youth been a member of the RG Wiesbaden-Biebrich 1888, a prestigious rowing club in Wiesbaden.

Reinicke was not unfamiliar with the class of gentlemen who rowed as well as rode. It had been a popular sport in Halle, where he had attended realgymnasium. General Müller, who was himself from that city, would have undoubtedly been a rower, and would be even more enthusiastic than Richter about this proposal.

Reinicke had his own doubts. While the British naval activities around the islands seemed to have ceased for the time being, it had been less than a month since Hoffman’s and Foster-Smythe’s successful escape by sea. Reinstating a boat race was practically inviting enterprising islanders to make a similar attempt. A less risky event - - say, a tennis tournament, in which he knew he would hold his own, despite anything Peter Porteous had to say in the matter, or even a chess competition - - would have been far more advisable.

He sought to give voice to this opinion in an appropriate way. “With the greatest respect, Herr Oberst, would we be able to ensure this race is conducted safely? There could be an accident, or adverse weather, or one of the crews might get it into their heads to try to escape.”

Reinicke wasn’t surprised when his views were brushed aside; he’d grown accustomed to being overruled by the infinite wisdom of their Herr Oberst-Doktor. Speaking as if to a child, Richter said, patiently, “No one would try to escape in a quad scull, Reinicke, not in these waters. And we will deploy safety vessels, _here_ and _here_ , should any of the crews get into difficulties.”

“What about the sea mines, sir?” Kluge asked. Reinicke glanced up at the Oberleutnant; he had not expected support from these quarters, but it was true that, despite his many faults, Kluge had occasionally displayed halfway-decent judgment.

“There are no mines in the race vicinity, Otto. None around Herm harbour, none around Havelet Bay. In fact, we can doubtless rely on the Half Moon battery to shoot any crew foolhardy enough to stray off course.” Richter cast a wry look at Reinicke, who did not appreciate this little barb at his expense.

“Shall I let Sir Walter and his team know they can proceed?” Freidel looked pleased with himself, as well he might under the circumstances.

Richter nodded. “Yes. Tell them to draw up the route and the plans, and I will scrutinise them personally. Otto, I’ll need your views as well.”

Reinicke pursed his lips. He should be glad that his own endorsement wasn’t being sought for this dangerous enterprise. As far as he was concerned, if anything were to go wrong, the rest of the command staff would have no one to blame save for themselves.

* * *

For such an overwhelmingly Protestant community, the Guernésiais were a surprisingly superstitious lot. Collected by the English and forcibly immersed in its religion, they were nevertheless steeped in French culture in other ways, including a rather Gallic propensity to revere the forces of Nature.

Victor Hugo had written, of the islanders, that their true faith was Paganism. His famous novel _Les Travailleurs de la Mer_ , depicting the struggle of superstition with science, had been filled with magical Guernsey references: a haunted house at Pleinmont, the megalithic site of L’Ancresse Common, where virgin sacrifices had been carried out, and an oceanic force that Hugo had imbued with the sentience and malevolence of an angry god. This god was served by a monstrous Devil-fish, given the Guernésiais appellation of _pieuvre_ , which dragged pirates and other unworthy criminals to their death and which had almost condemned Hugo’s virginal protagonist Gilliat to the same fate.

It was said that Hugo had based his famous monster on the North Pacific giant octopus that was native to Guernsey’s waters. Reinicke had been given to understand that, in a case of life imitating art, some decades after Hugo’s exile on Guernsey had come to an end, the island had experienced a plague of these creatures, which pulled down fishing nets and almost capsized boats and even pursued a swimmer off Soldiers’ Bay. By then virgin sacrifices had been long outlawed, but this plague had apparently only ceased after local fishermen reprised the ritual of offering a libation of wine and cider to “ _Le Bon-Homme du Mer_ ”, and casting a never-worn garment of virgin wool into the sea.

This wasn’t in keeping with the Reich’s emphasis on scientific research and technology, but Reinicke found the islanders’ naturalistic superstitions charming; at least they were refreshingly un-English.

Of course, rustic charms had their limits. For instance, although Sir Walter had tentatively enquired whether the Feldkommandant might permit similar rituals to be conducted at the Herm regatta, this was rejected as out of the question; Reinicke was gratified to note that, on this topic of irrational beliefs, at least, the Kommandantur was aligned in upholding the New Order’s modern approach.

The day of the regatta dawned bright and sunny: a perfect August morning in the height of a perfect Channel Islands summer which even the Reichsführer might have approved of. All of Guernsey society had turned out in their Sunday best to watch the crews line up along Havelet Bay. In the crowd, Reinicke spotted Dr and Mrs Philip Martel, the doctor wearing an unusually smart grey suit. It seemed Richter was keeping a lookout for the Martels, too, and when he caught the doctor’s eye he lifted his hand in a jaunty salute.

The start line for the men’s quad race had been carefully marked between the raised bunker above the Havelet Bay sea wall and the kiosk at the ladies bathing pool. In races past, rowers and their coxes had been free to choose their own course to Herm as long as they finished in line with the harbour pier-head and the northern wooden pole, but for this regatta the Guernsey Rowing Club had insisted, on the advice of the Feldkommandantur, on the crews taking a particular route south of Hermetier, with safety boats stationed along the way.

Finally, all was in readiness, and General Müller himself flagged the crews off. Away they went, the coxes shouting encouragement, the rowers’ blades carving a path through the clear blue of the ocean.

Sir Walter had offered the German command party the use of one of the Club’s sailing skiffs, but the Feldkommandant had decided they would utilise a military vessel instead, particularly with General Müller on board. Soon they, too, were off, their helmsman steering a more scenic course toward the open sea.

Despite Reinicke’s initial misgivings, he could not deny how pleasant it was to be out on the water, with the sun on one’s face and the bracing sea breeze in one’s hair. The ocean spray left an agreeable tang on his lips, and Reinicke breathed in deeply, enjoying the crisp scent.

Beside him, Richter had taken off his uniform hat. The wind combed through his still-thick hair, which Reinicke noticed, for the first time, was a surprisingly agreeable reddish-gold hue. Though they had kept their distance from the rowers and the cordon of the safety boats, the Colonel was watching the progress of the race through his binoculars.

On Richter’s other side, General Müller was holding firmly to his own hat in one hand and the guard rail in the other. The ubiquitous riding crop, never far from him, was tucked securely under one arm. He was conferring with Freidel, who was peering through another set of binoculars.

As the others began to discuss the merits of the respective crews, Reinicke glanced over his shoulder, and spotted something on the horizon.

It looked like a large, rippling wave, rolling towards them from the distant line of sky. Reinicke was no sailor, but if it was a wave, it seemed to be moving in a rather unusual way.

Frowning, Reinicke made his way over to the vessel’s bow to get a better look. He got there just as the wave reached them.

The impact was unexpectedly strong; it would have knocked Reinicke off his feet had he not caught hold the rail in time. Behind him, he heard a crash, and some muffled cursing; clearly not all his colleagues had been so lucky.

He could not spare a moment for them, though, for his attention was focused on another gathering wave, twice as large as the first, and approaching twice as rapidly. It was accompanied by a huge grey stormfront that seemed to have come out of nowhere, racing across what had just moments before been clear blue sky.

This time he managed to get off a shout of warning before the wave struck.

This wave was powerful enough to jerk his right hand off the railing and knock the hat clean off his head. As the sky overhead darkened and the wind whipped into a roar, something dark and limber emerged from the ocean to fasten itself wetly to the ship’s rail.

A knee-jerk instinct to cower seized him, which Reinicke fought down as being unworthy of the Waffen-SS. Besides, fleeing like a coward meant he would have to let go of the rail, and another wave like that would pitch him into the sea.

Instead, his ears ringing with his colleagues’ shouting, he reached for his weapon. As he pulled his pistol from its holster and aimed it at the strange thing holding fast to the railing, he saw that the thick, prehensile sinew was lined underneath with suckers, as if it belonged to the pieuvre of Hugo’s novel.

“Look at this,” he was trying to say, when other tendrils rose dripping from the water, and took him by the wrists, and snatched him into the air.

There was a moment of frozen horror as he spun head over heels through the sky, deafened and blinded by the storm, unable to breathe or scream or even think.

Then he plunged into the sea, and as the tendrils hauled him down, and water stopped up his ears and mouth, it was impossible to breathe or scream or think _at all_.

His lungs burned from the lack of air; bright lights swam under his eyelids. He struggled, but he couldn’t escape the creature that had seized him, dragging him deeper and deeper against the current.

Perhaps this was how it ended. Not on the battlefields of Poland or Russia, as it had for many brave German soldiers, but at the bottom of the turbulent sea surrounding these islands so valuable to the Reich.

Just as consciousness slipped away from him, as the last of his air bubbled from his lips, he found himself breaking through the water’s surface.

For a long time all he could do was to retch and choke and retch again, his heart racing as he swallowed down large gulps of sweet air. At length, his coughing fit subsided, and he warily lifted his head to take stock of his surroundings.

He had washed up at the edge of a shallow pool in a dark, watery cave. The rocky cave walls around him gleamed with a strange phosphorescence that gave off just enough light to see by.

As his strength returned, he tried to push himself into a sitting position, and realised he was held fast. He looked down in horror at the thick appendage that encircled his chest, the colour of clotted blood, and dotted on the underside with suckers. There was another about his waist. His legs, visible in the shallow water, were also gripped by the same discoloured, undulating tendrils.

Panic rocketed through him once again. He began to fight against the strange bonds, to try to pull them from his body, to no avail.

The pliant surfaces that trapped him were pulsing, warm, obviously sentient. Was this some multi-armed sea-creature, a giant version of the great Pacific octopus that had once plagued Guernsey’s fishermen, which now had him at its mercy?

In response to his efforts, the tentacles tightened their grip, crushing the wet fabric of his uniform against him. As the air was squeezed from his lungs, as his struggles grew weaker, he felt the appendages sliding across his body with perplexing intent.

At first he thought he was hallucinating as his brain starved of oxygen. Surely no sea-creature would know how to undo the buttons of his field tunic and then send its tendrils curling inside his shirt to slide against his skin?

But this was indeed what the tendrils did, and more. They pulled his tunic from his shoulders to his elbows, pinioning his arms at his sides. Reinicke gasped as the suckers on the tentacles’ undersides dug into his throat and chest, twisting sensitive nipples which no one, not even Chantal in Paris, had caressed before, leaving welts in his undefended flesh.

“No,” Reinicke whispered in despair, to himself as much as to the creature, but his captor was just getting started.

The appendages around his legs were like steel cables, impervious to his attempts to kick free. Deliberately, they spread his thighs and held him in place as other limber tentacles neatly unfastened his uniform breeches and peeled the tight fabric from his hips. When a new tendril dipped into his underwear and curled around the rim of his anus, he could not suppress the shudder of slow, horrified realisation.

“ _No_ ,” he said again, a vain defiance; one which was cut short by another tentacle snaking up his throat and stuffing itself into his mouth.

He couldn’t help his terrified moan; he could no longer deny what was happening to him.

The eradication of perverted sexuality in the German Volk had been a particular concern of the Reichsführer from before the most recent 1941 decree; Reinicke had done his best to keep himself pure. And on the ship, it had been he who had first identified the creature’s approach as an attack and given the alarm. It was as if he had been chosen out of all the soldiers on that boat, for his wits and his innocence, and brought to this place under the ocean, this lair of the beast.

All was now horrifyingly clear. This creature was no mere octopus as conceived of by science and the natural world. This was the Devil-fish, a monster of magic and no mere superstition, the incarnation of the Good Man of the Sea feared by Guernsey’s islanders and foolishly overlooked by the occupying power - - and it had taken Reinicke as a virgin sacrifice.

* * *

There were five German command staff aboard this single-hull military patrol vessel, together with three crewsmen, two security guards, and one photographer for Berlin-required propaganda. It was the Kommandant’s duty to protect them, including the young SS officer he liked the least of all.

Which was why, when the giant, many-armed creature rose from the sea and took hold of Sturmbannführer Reinicke and hoisted him over the vessel’s rail like a rag doll, Richter set aside considerations of his own personal safety and rushed to the bow of the ship in pursuit.

Richter’s sea legs were good, but the vessel was pitching and yawing in the grip of the storm; it took him long seconds to reach the ship’s rail and peer over. By this time, all traces of Reinicke and the creature had vanished from the sea’s turbulent surface.

Behind him Freidel was shouting, “We need to raise anchor and get out here!” Kluge, too, was similarly exhorting the crewmen to get the engines started.

Fiercely, Richter shouted back over his shoulder, “Belay those orders! We have a man overboard!”

There was a collective intake of breath, and, with some difficulty, Freidel made his way to Richter’s side.

“Dieter, it isn’t safe to stay!”

“I know it isn’t,” Richter said, grimly, struggling to undo the nearest life preserver. He was well aware that Freidel and the others found Reinicke as tiresome and malicious as he did. They had all been frankly appalled by the man’s latest insistence on covering up flat-out murder, and couldn’t wait to see the back of their SS attaché. But he was _their_ SS attaché, and regardless of how tempting the prospect was, Richter wouldn’t leave the man behind.

“You’re putting everyone else at risk,” Freidel warned, even as he moved to help with the life preserver. They finally tugged it loose and Richter heaved it into the sea, where it landed with a splash.

Richter said, as much to convince himself as his Feldkommandant, “We can’t just abandon him!”

As if in response to this futile vow, rain began to pelt down, and the empty sea suddenly came alive.

There were seemingly hundreds of the things, _thousands_ , even. They shot out of the waves, and fastened themselves to the ship’s rails, and writhed across the decks in grasping ropey masses as if they’d come straight out of people’s nightmares.

The men began to scream. Someone opened fire. Richter whirled around to see Kluge and a crewman struggling with an appendage-encrusted anchor, and General Müller fiercely attacking a nearby brace of tentacles with his riding crop.

“We must go now,” Freidel exclaimed. Richter knew it, of course; knew further hesitation might cost them more lives, for there was no telling what this sudden infestation of creatures might do to the vessel. His rational mind knew that, in balancing the ethics of his actions, this one further blemish would not make a difference to his existing burden of guilt. He could do nothing further for Reinicke; his duty was now to those of his men that were left.

Still, he hesitated for a moment longer, turning to cast one last look at the ocean into which his infuriating SS attaché had vanished.

And, in that moment, he was lost.

The Reich did not believe in malevolent gods, in power which it did not create for itself. It took pride in its scientific ability to tame the elements and to bring Nature to heel, in its modern means of warfare that brought order to unruly chaos. It was confident that its superior technology and discipline would prevail over the old ways of inferior civilisations and weaker men.

Richter wanted to believe there was a scientific explanation for the impossible creature that had risen from the sea and seized him around the waist. The result of an experiment gone wrong, perhaps, some monstrous cross-breed between beast and fish and human that had escaped from a secret laboratory from this war or the last one.

The islanders, however, would doubtless see this creature as an emissary of an angry god, furious over battles and bloodshed wreaked by the Germans across Guernsey’s waters, seeking vengeance. Angrily, vengefully, it plucked Richter from the centre of his power, fettered him in many-limbed manacles, and dragged him down into its watery domain.

Hazily, through the fog of rapidly diminishing air, Richter supposed this was not an unexpected moral reckoning. He was the Kommandant of Guensey; he had pursued the wartime goals of the Wehrmacht; he ought not be surprised when a conquered populace found the wherewithal to strike back. On some level, he shouldn’t be surprised he was being targeted, even if the counter-attack was coming from these most unexpected quarters.

As the light faded behind his eyes, Richter thought of Anna in Berlin, taking up cudgels against the Führer in her own way; of General Beck and von Wittke, men of courage who might one day soon pursue a counter-attack against the current political leadership of their country. In these dying moments, he wondered if he had let them down; if so, there was no longer any opportunity to make amends.

He almost welcomed the darkness that took him.

Spinoza’s idea of an afterlife was one that existed only insofar as the unconscious essence of mind survived the body. He would not have admitted to a post-mortem state as this, where every fibre of Richter’s being had wakened to itself, filled with overwhelming instinct to survive, to preserve this bodily shell at all costs.

There was, then, no mistaking this as afterlife, or at least as Spinoza’s afterlife. He must be still alive, then: blood pounding in his ears, breath rattling in his lungs as he coughed up what seemed like half the ocean.

Through the roar of his heartbeat, his struggle for air, he thought he heard a familiar voice.

“Herr Oberst! Are you all right?”

It was Reinicke. So he hadn’t been lost, after all; impossibly, they were both alive. Notwithstanding their previous record of conflict and ill-will, Richter felt himself seized with an overwhelming sense of relief.

He opened his eyes. He was in a cave, sprawled on his side across a shallow, uneven pool of water. In the dim light, he could see a prostrate figure beside him, an arm’s length away, familiar features turned anxiously to his.

“Reinicke. Where are we? What’s happening?” Richter tried to reach out, and realised he was being held fast by the many limbs of the creature that had brought him here.

The creature that had brought _both of them_ here.

Slowly, Richter discovered he had been divested of his gun-belt and his sidearm. His uniform hung around him in tatters, torn from his body by the uncaring force of Nature, or perhaps in a deliberate act of desecration. The appendages that held him fast were powerful enough to have effortlessly lifted a grown man into thin air, and were cunning enough to find their way under the wreck of his clothes, seeking out bare skin.

Even as Richter discerned the thing’s ultimate goal - - as adrenaline jolted through his weary body and he started, belatedly, to put up a fight - - the tendrils insinuated themselves past the seam of his trousers, pressed between his thighs, and burrowed into his hole.

Richter heard himself cry out. It was agonising, but at the same time, astonishingly, he felt himself hardening in response. He had been on Guernsey for two years, away from his wife and all other sexual indulgences; it was small wonder that his long-deprived flesh could not now help rousing to even these monstrous caresses. New tentacles slid around his neglected member, coaxing him erect, and he groaned again in guilty pleasure.

The creature was raping him. It would humiliate him and take away his dignity and bring him to climax, and then it was going to kill him.

With a supreme act of will, Richter pulled himself together. He was an officer of the Wehrmacht; he would not be easily cowed by displays of power, even if they were the acts of an angry ocean god, or represented a penance for crimes he could never acknowledge. His duty was to endure this impossible punishment with as much dignity as he could, and to try, if at all possible, to survive.

As if from very far away, he heard a voice. At first, he thought he was imagining things, before he remembered that Reinicke was trapped here with him.

"No," the young man was saying, "Stop. This should be over. Please, no more."

Richter pulled himself up on one elbow so he could see what was happening, even as the tentacles continued to thrust their way inside him.

The creature had rolled Reinicke onto his back and pinned his arms against the side of the pool with ropy appendages. A thick tendril had looped itself loosely around his throat and was toying at the corner of his mouth. His head lolled back, his expression glassy; there was no mistaking the desperation in his half-lidded eyes.

Despite himself, Richter was moved to pity. It was clear what the creature was doing to his young officer; beneath the undulating ripples across the pool’s surface, he could see tentacles moving sinuously against Reincke’s lower body, caressing and penetrating him as he tried vainly to resist.

“Hold on,” he called out, and Reinicke turned to him abjectly.

“Oberst…! If you can … please …”

He broke off with a choked groan, his back arching helplessly against the pool’s edge. His bare chest heaved in the strange light, and Richter could see it was covered with angry welts where the thing’s suckers had drawn blood.

Richter was put in mind of Creation striking back against them, seeking reparation for the evils that humanity had perpetrated against the natural world. Perhaps his own violation was no worse than the violations which the Wehrmacht had perpetrated over the course of this war. He led the occupying forces on Guernsey; if the island was really seeking to take its revenge, the responsibility was his to suffer, the atonement his to make, no one else’s.

And he had a duty to provide leadership and courage to the men he commanded, even one as stubborn and wrong-headed as Reinicke. Perhaps it wasn’t even entirely the young man’s fault. He must have joined the Hitler Youth while he still a schoolboy, as so many of those of his generation had, before they had the tools to discern any better. Perhaps the failing was that of Richter’s generation - - of comfortable electors and scholars and officers who had lacked the wisdom or courage to speak out, let alone to take the needed action against the political leadership of their country - - and if so, then it was he who had failed Reinicke, as well as the young men and women of the German Volk.

He could do nothing to redress this failing, such as it was. But he could perhaps assist Reinicke now. He had a responsibility to his young officer, to help him survive this ordeal, or, if it came to that, to help him die with dignity.

He called out, as steadily as he could, “Have courage, man. Don’t lose heart. You can bear it; this will soon be over.”

Reinicke jerked his head from side to side, the blond hair sticking damply to his forehead. Hectic colour had crawled up his cheeks. He panted, “Oberst, I can’t… Not while you’re looking at me - - _No_!”

His body convulsed again as the creature thrust into him under the water; he let out a moan, too long and low for it to be from pain. Richter recalled that Reinicke had once turned up his nose at the bordello on the island; it could have been months or even years since he’d last had sex, which must have been a hardship for such a young man.

Or, God forbid, perhaps Reinicke was still a virgin, or one of those closeted boys condemned by the Reich’s purity policies. It had never been appropriate to speculate about the sexual proclivities of any of his men, but in this life-or-death crisis, Richter could no longer afford this luxury. If Reinicke had never known a lover, or if he was in fact living a lie that would attract the Reichsführer’s death sentence, then he would need even more help to endure this terrible rape.

“It’s all right,” he said, biting back a cry of his own as the tendril inside him slid against his sensitive prostate. “It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

Reinicke closed his eyes, trembling. He muttered, between his teeth, “I know it’s wrong, I know it’s not how we’re supposed to feel. But I can’t, Oberst. I _can’t_. It feels so, so - -”

So _good_ , he obviously wanted to say, and could not; there was, then, some basis to Richter’s first instinct. Richter wasn’t surprised: he remembered the way Reinicke’s gaze had lingered on the more comely of his young subordinates, on blond, carelessly beautiful Peter Porteous.

Well, even if so, Richter had only spoken the truth: it was nothing to be ashamed of, regardless of what Himmler’s blasted directive said. Richter had seen enough of life and love in Cambridge; he was familiar with the illicit intimacy that passed between men within the stone walls of Peterhouse where no women were admitted. He knew there were some things about human nature which might be legislated against by both the English and the Germans, but would never be eradicated.

Reinicke had begun to sob silently, forbidden pleasure warring with disgrace. Richter could picture the creature mercilessly violating him under the water, in the same way as Richter himself was being violated - - prick hard and straining, body opening helplessly around the intrusion, powerless to defend itself from its own shameful arousal.

Cautiously, Richter inched himself forward until his fingers could touch Reinicke’s open palm. Reinicke’s hand closed over his like a lifeline.

“Klaus, do you hear me? Open your eyes. Look at me. Don’t look down, look at me.”

Reinicke’s eyelashes lifted, and his wet gaze latched onto Richter’s, more vulnerable in this moment than Richter had ever seen him before.

Richter continued, steadily, “You’re not alone. It is not only happening to you. There is no shame in it - - it is happening to me as well.”

Disregarded tears began to stream down Reinicke’s cheeks. His moans and shudders mirrored the rhythmic thrusts of the tendril in Richter’s own passage; clearly the creature was fucking them both in the same slick, savage tempo.

“Oberst - - oh, God - - please, make it stop - -”

“Look at me,” Richter said, “focus on me, Klaus. I’m with you. I’m here.”

He pushed aside the sensation of the creature's caresses in order to clasp Reinicke’s hand; Reinicke came with a choked, desperate sob, his eyes never leaving Richter’s face.

As Reinicke subsided, his body trembling with the aftershocks of orgasm, it was Richter’s turn.

With no duty now to distract him, he found his hips moving as if of their own volition, unable to resist this inhuman lover. He was humiliatingly aroused; there was no excuse for the sheer degradation, for the dishonour it brought upon the Wehrmacht and himself. He had never felt this helpless. The tentacles breached him, making him pant and writhe shamefully as pleasure jolted through him with each thrust, forcing him closer and closer to the edges of himself.

“This is wrong,” he found himself saying, mindlessly; “I’m not strong enough.” As his climax approached, he knew there was nothing respectable about this surrender; in that wretched moment, he felt he would rather die than submit.

“Oberst, please,” Reinicke whispered; with some difficulty, Richter focused on him, and saw the young man had managed to inch close enough to place his free arm around Richter’s neck.

“You don’t have to be strong. The Reich is stronger than the both of us. You can just let go,” he said, and Richter did just that, finally yielding up the last of his pride.

He ought to be thinking of Anna, but there was no room within him for anything other than Reinicke’s intent blue gaze as his orgasm was wrung from him: a final, wretched convulsion that took him down into the darkness at last.

* * *

Now that it was all behind them, Richter could admit to himself that he hadn’t expected either of them to survive their experiences in the creature’s lair.

But somehow they _had_ survived - - an outcome owed to the fickle chance of Nature, or the indulgence of the ocean god whose thirst for revenge had been slaked by the Germans’ violation, or to Kluge’s instinct to cast their picnic lunch into the sea as a makeshift sacrifice.

Their survival was also in no small part owed to Freidel’s refusal to call off the search. The Feldkommandant had insisted they continue to patrol the Little Roussel channel between Guernsey and Herm for the better part of an hour, which was how the military vessel had been on hand to rescue them when they emerged from the caves.

Richter said as much on his visit to Reinicke’s sickbed. The young officer had recovered rapidly from his ordeals; it seemed he would soon be well enough to resume his duties. The bruises on his face had faded to yellow, and undoubtedly the same could be said for the welts on his body.

The doctors said nothing about injuries not visible to the naked eye, and Richter didn’t ask.

When Richter had finished his account, Reinicke glanced out of the window. In the morning sunlight, he looked drained, as pale as the crisp white sheets of the hospital bed.

“I’m grateful to the Feldkommanmdant, of course, and the crew,” he murmured. “But as I recall it, it was you, Herr Oberst, who first came to my rescue.”

Richter made a scoffing sound. “Some rescue it was, with me ending up a prisoner as well!”

This was, however, dangerous territory. Richter had refused to let the military doctors perform more than a perfunctory physical examination, for he simply could not bear speaking of what had occurred to him, not even to Ernst Freidel. He shifted uncomfortably in the hard hospital chair; his hole still ached, as did his flesh. It was even worse because he’d found himself reliving his experiences as he lay alone in his quarters at night, and so doing, had found himself dangerously aroused.

He told himself that if matters became truly unbearable, he would reach out to Dr Martel, who could at least be trusted not to report any psychological trauma or crises of sexuality to prying ears in Berlin.

Reinicke had no such outlet. Richter couldn’t imagine what the young man was suffering.

To his credit, though, Reinicke was still able to react to the Kommandant’s feeble joke with his characteristic crooked smile.

“Then perhaps we rescued each other,” he said, and he turned his hand over in his lap, palm up, in invitation.

Here was even more dangerous territory, and not just because of Himmler’s directive. Richter remembered clinging to that outstretched hand, remembered Reinicke trying to comfort him in the cave under the sea, remembered him saying, _The Reich is stronger than the both of us_.

But what if the Reich was in fact not stronger? What if Richter’s generation was in fact duty-bound to challenge their country's political leadership? What would happen if Richter were to take Nature’s punishment to heart, and find the courage to take action at last?

Richter looked down, and discovered that he’d taken Reinicke’s hand, after all: a white-knuckled clasp that was part determination and part indecision.

**Author's Note:**

> So very grateful to H. for helping look over the non-tentacle monster aspects of this story. Full responsibility for all of it remains my own.
> 
> [Guernsey Rowing Club history](https://www.guernseyrowingclub.org.gg/club-history).  
> [The accident-prone August 2010 Herm Rowing Regatta](http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/other_sports/rowing/8920881.stm).  
> [Rowing traditions in Wiesbaden](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schierstein), home to the RG Wiesbaden-Biebrich 1888.  
> [Hern regatta rules/route](https://www.guernseyrowingclub.org.gg/course-maps).  
> [Details/GPS positions of the Guernsey to Herm race](https://062535ac-90bb-4501-b3bf-337efce060b6.filesusr.com/ugd/5deaa2_0949012e72ab49c28167a2fd2fb173fc.pdf).  
> [Map of Havelet Bay](http://www.rciyc.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Visiting-Yachtsmens-Guide-to-the-C.I..pdf).  
> [WW2 German fortifications on Guernsey](http://www.on1.click/info-fortifications_of_guernsey-part-02/).  
> [Guernsey superstitions](http://www.crlearning.org/files/HTML/79000/79158-0000.html#ID0EEDAE).


End file.
